Extracts| Danny Finkelstein | Mandelson punched me

Tony Blair's relations with Gordon Brown were so poor that the two men even had heated words on the day of Labour's historic election victory in 1997, Alastair Campbell's diary has confirmed.

The former No 10 director of communications has said that he has left out the most damaging revelations about the rows between Mr Blair and his eventual successor, in order not to hand a "gold mine" to the Opposition parties.

But political analysts reading the book, which was published this morning, say that enough detail remains for the dire state of relations between the two, then the most powerful men in the land, to be apparent.

At what should have been the two men's most euphoric moment, the victory day when Labour came to power on May 1 1997 after 18 years of Conservative rule, there were "bad-tempered conversations" between Mr Blair and Mr Brown over the reshuffle of the frontbench team into ministerial positions, Mr Campbell records.

Within five months, the failure of communications between No 10 and No 11 was so already so pronounced that Mr Brown gave an interview to The Times ruling out joining the EU Exchange Rate Mechanism for the life of Labour's first parliament without Mr Blair being aware of what he was going to do.

"It was all quiet until after 10 when TB called after he had seen the news and said what the hell is going on?," Campbell writes.

"'We never agreed this,' he said. I said I thought they had...

"TB could not get hold of GB - 10.15pm - so he spoke to Charlie [Whelan, Mr Brown's press secretary]. TB asked if we had ruled out EMU this parliament. Yes, said Charlie. 'Is that not what you want?' No, it is not, said TB. 'Oh,' said Charlie."

Over the course of Labour's first term, the suspicion between the two men and their political acolytes hardened into two hostile camps, the book implies.

On February 17 2001, Mr Campbell records that Mr Brown's supporters were upset when Mr Blair authorised an airstrike in Iraq on a day when Mr Brown was due to make an announcement. "His disciples seem to think we had deliberately bombed Iraq as a way of minimising coverage," notes Mr Campbell.

He adds that Cherie Blair complained that her husband could not sleep at night because he was so worried about Mr Brown fighting with Peter Mandelson.

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